


The Family Quadruple

by stardust_made



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Family, Love, Minor Character Death, Multi, Other, Pre-Canon, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-23
Updated: 2012-10-23
Packaged: 2017-11-16 22:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/544296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardust_made/pseuds/stardust_made
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four ficlets in the 221b format, for the prompts 'Birth', 'Parents', 'Children' and 'Family'. Two scenes from Sherlock's and John's past as children and two from their present together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Family Quadruple

 

 ***Birth***  
  
John still remembered the day he went to the hospital to look at baby Harriet for the first time. John’s dad knew someone—Dad made friends everywhere he delivered—so he told John they were going to see Mum and the baby in secret. All John had as an emotional memory from that moment was just that—the emotion, oblique and intangible.  
  
The baby’s face was a small red blob from where John was standing, looking up to the fifth floor of the hospital building. The whitish parcel was constantly moving in Mum’s arms. Mum’s face seemed far away and not much bigger than the baby’s. Not red, though.  
  
The only face John remembered well was Dad’s or what was visible of it as he had it upturned. A big grin was splitting it, making Dad’s jaw and cheeks swell like those of John’s hamsters.  
  
“We’re a proper family now, Johnny,” Dad kept saying, his Scottish accent strong. “A proper family.”  
  
John wasn’t young enough not to wonder why they weren’t a proper family before, just the three of them.  
  
Some ten years later, when he was around fifteen, he came across a death certificate in his Mum’s belongings. “Lily Catherine Watson” said the name on it. Born a year and six months to the day after John was born, died at birth.  
  
  
 ***Children***  
  
When Sherlock first listened to a conversation without being seen, he did it very naturally, the way he would have stopped to reach up for the door handle if the door was closed. He was four at the time; he had no concept of eavesdropping until Mycroft created it for him soon afterwards, attaching to it the labels ‘useful’ but ‘wrong’. Sherlock didn’t debate ‘wrong’, but since he was already capable of figuring out a lot of things by himself, he wondered whether eavesdropping wasn’t just trouble for nothing.  
  
“You are such a lovely couple, Mr and Mrs Holmes,” Mademoiselle Jannot, Sherlock’s _au pair_ , was saying. “I took the job because I thought your children would be, um…How shall I say? I mean, they are delightful! Your eldest is such a well-behaved, normal boy.” Her voice went quieter. “But I don’t think I—Sherlock is…He’s different. I’m afraid I’ve overestimated myself.”  
  
Sherlock already knew everything there was to know from this conversation so stopping to listen seemed like a waste of time. His parents _were_ lovely people. Their family _was_ a normal family—in context. Sherlock _was_ different and Mademoiselle Jannot _had_ overestimated herself. Quite a bit.  
  
There was one thing she had gotten very wrong, of course. It made Sherlock decide that after all the endeavour was worth the bother.  
  
  
 ***Parents***  
  
At the rate with which John was breaking up with his girlfriends—or rather they were breaking up with him—it would have been naïve to hope for the joys of parenthood. Someone had to stay long enough for sex without condoms to happen. It was a sign of John’s pessimistic attitude that he considered a child which was ‘an accident’ as his best chance of becoming a father.  
  
By some twisted logic all this should have made him more tolerant to Sherlock’s childishness, to his messed up sense of boundaries, to his inability to recognize the other person’s limits—or his own, for that matter. John was happy with being Sherlock’s closest friend. Initially, he felt some (arguably perverse) pride at being _the_ one with the power to make Sherlock Holmes halt and think about something other than ‘the Work’. Regardless of whether it was with a soft murmur and a nod of approval or with a raised voice and a command, John was sure he wouldn’t be ignored. In turn, Sherlock covered the range between withering and docile, but on the whole his trust in John was unconditional.  
  
John couldn’t say when he didn’t want to be the parent in the relationship anymore. It was probably around the same time he started wondering what he actually _wanted_ to be.  
  
  
 ***Family***  
  
How was he to explain to John what John was doing? John got so unreasonably cross when Sherlock “presumed to know what a man bloody felt”. Like when Sherlock pointed out the inconsistencies in John’s response to Sherlock’s return from the dead and John punched him. The bruise was barely gone and Sherlock had no desire to renew it. But they had to talk; soon, too, before this whole thing with the kissing, the threats and the promises, the clinging to each other like some symbiotic marine organisms…  
  
Probably already out of control.  
  
Such a mess. Abhorrent. Sherlock wanted to shout, “Do you realize what this means? No family for you, John! No children; no wife to greet you home, or whatever it is wives do. Not even a proper home.”  
  
Ironically, he mumbled it. There was some serious tugging at clothes, warmth everywhere, and the questions bubbled up, made Sherlock fear he’d poison John’s mouth by keeping the words unspoken in his own.  
  
John stopped to listen, of course. Panting a bit, his face utterly serious. When Sherlock finished, John nodded.  
  
“Idiot,” he declared, more to himself. “How is this not a family?” He held Sherlock’s eyes almost sternly, but his voice was soft, smooth, like a pebble polished in the sea for centuries. “Sherlock, my home is where I belong.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Livejournal [over here](http://stardust-made.livejournal.com/67389.html).


End file.
